USA Today’s Pattern of Inaccuracy on Iran

Are you cheered by the diplomatic sounds coming from Iran’s new president, and hopeful that potential talks might lessen tensions over Iran’s nuclear policies? Don’t get too excited, suggested USA Today on September 27.

“President Hasan Rouhani’s pronouncements at the UN have raised guarded hopes that progress might be possible,” cautioned reporters Oren Dorell and William M. Welch, “but they also served as a reminder that the path to that progress will not be quick or easy.”

Why’s that? Because, in his September 24 speech, Rouhani “repeated Iran’s demand that any nuclear agreement must recognize the country’s right under international treaties to continue enriching uranium.”

That’s right, he is erecting “obstacles”:

Rouhani said earlier Thursday that all nations, including Israel, should dismantle their nuclear weapons — words that were taken as introducing obstacles to a nuclear deal.

But are these conditions unreasonable, and are they really obstacles to an agreement? That depends on who you ask. If you talk to neoconservatives who’ve nursed a decades-long hatred of Iran, you get different answers than if you ask scholars of international law or conflict resolution.

So USA Today asked two neoconservatives. First Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute:

Those comments show that Rouhani is not serious, said Michael Rubin, a former Middle East expert at the Pentagon under President George W. Bush. “The more you complicate the issue, the more you’re setting up the talks to fail,” he said.

And then:

Michael Doran, a former Middle East adviser in the Bush White House, said Rouhani’s words about Israel are “a wise negotiating strategy” to present Iran as a victim of a Western double standard.

If you didn’t know better, you might take away that Rouhani was sly and intransigent. In fact, what Rouhani is calling for is exactly what the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty calls for.

The NPT, signed by the US and Iran, says that Iran, like all signatories, has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and that nuclear-armed nations must disarm. Citing an international law expert in the piece might have cleared that up, and perhaps even pointed out that the US is in violation of the treaty.

But a look at USA Today‘s Iran coverage over time suggests the omission, and the misportrayal of Rouhani’s remarks as obstacles, are not mistakes, but rather part of a pattern of putting Iran in a bad light, sometimes at the expense of the truth.

For instance, last June, after Rouhani won Iran’s presidential election, USA Today reported (FAIR Action Alert, 6/21/13) that the president-elect “is known for his negotiating skill over the country’s nuclear weapons program.” In fact, Rouhani represented Iran’s atomic energy program, but both Iran and a consensus of US intelligence agencies say Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program (New York Times, 2/24/12). Months later, USA Today (9/23/13) repeated the canard, reporting that Barack Obama was trying to “persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapons program.”

said he was prepared to open negotiations with the United States and other nations on its nuclear program after years of refusing to allow inspection of its facilities.

In fact, UN inspectors have been in and out of Iran for years, doing their jobs, with a few disputes (MERIP, 2/7/13), mostly based on Iran’s insistence, in accordance with the NPT, that military facilities with no evidence of nuclear activity are exempt from inspections.

There are two to six IAEA inspectors on the ground in Iran every day, [deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Herman] Nackaerts said, covering 16 Iranian facilities. On average, he said, that means that an inspector visits Iran’s enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow once a week. If there are suspicions about any improper activities, they can go more often, he added.

Related

Senior Media Analyst and Co-producer of CounterSpin Steve Rendall is FAIR's senior analyst. He is co-host of CounterSpin, FAIR's national radio show. His work has received awards from Project Censored, and has won the praise of noted journalists such as Les Payne, Molly Ivins and Garry Wills. He is co-author of The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error (The New Press, 1995, New York City). Rendall has appeared on dozens of national television and radio shows, including appearances on CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC, MTV and Fox Morning News. He was the subject of a profile in the New York Times (5/19/96), and has been quoted on issues of media and politics in publications such as the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and New York Times. Rendall contributed stories to the International Herald Tribune from France, Spain and North Africa; worked as a freelance writer in San Francisco; and worked as an archivist collecting historical material on the Spanish Civil War and the volunteers who fought in it. Rendall studied philosophy and chemistry at San Francisco State University, the College of Notre Dame and UC Berkeley.

It is important to keep the sanctions on until Iran abandons its nuclear weapons ambitions and improves it human rights record. Rouhani can start by immediately by releasing the 7 hostages taken in the Ashraf massacre. On September 1, Iraqi forces killed 52 residents of Camp Ashraf and took seven hostages. In this massacre, ordered by the religious fascism ruling Iran, the attackers’ shot unarmed people while their hands were tied behind their backs and they delivered coups de grace to the wounded lying on hospital beds (see video http://bit.ly/GzSmHj ) This is a great crime against humanity that should not go unheeded in silence and inaction, especially that the rest of Ashraf residents and 3,000 residents in Camp Liberty are threatened by similar massacres. All residents of Ashraf and Liberty, including the 52 that have been cold-bloodily murdered, are protected persons by the Fourth Geneva Convention and asylum-seekers with U.S. and UN responsible for their safety. Iran needs to be held accountable and pressure shouldn’t be lifted simply based on promises, but on concrete action.

Ajax, should the rest of the world impose sanctions on the United States until it closes Guantánamo Bay? And on Israel until it ends its illegal occupation of Palestine’s West Bank and frees the thousands of Palestinians it has imprisoned illegally?

Why is it all right for Israel to possess several hundred nuclear weapons and threaten its neighbors constantly with hostile acts: bombing them, engaging in piracy, murdering their citizens, kidnapping Palestinians, bulldozing Palestinian homes, stealing Palestinian land, and bullying every nation including the United States? Israel marches to a different drumbeat: it is more equal to steal a line from Orwell.

He has no control at all over his countries policies.He is simply a puppet dancing to the Ayatollah’s wishes.And that storm crow has shown no sign of a thaw.So no I do not trust him as far as I could throw him.Hitlers sec of state had volumes of soothing words.Hitler never spoke them.